Small Town

1. I grew up in Girvan - spent the first 16 years of my life there. Small towns can do big things to some people. A small town made me who I am, no question about that. A small town on the coast added another edge. No matter where I am, I feel the sea is always, always just over there.

2. My parents both taught in schools in various small towns for their whole careers. Nothing I can say in a sentence or two can sum up what those two careers meant or the lasting effect they have had in various small towns. I couldn't begin to try to explain that, it is too huge.

3. Growing up in a small town gave my brother a career, too. He writes so beautifully about how it really feels to be out be out on a limb, be that at the end of the train line or just how you feel. He has considered what a small town can do and turned it into drama.

4. Tonight, we went to see Smalltown, three play beginnings by three amazing writers but only one ending. The beauty of this (despite my slightly serious musings on small town life) is that it's a down and dirty, laugh-out-loud, folk in fancy dress, great night out. Foxes, stags, zombies and boxing kangaroos.

5. It's taken me almost 20 years to think of my small town upbringing as a positive thing. For every nice thing I might say there are many opposites to back it up. But here we are. I'm sitting beside someone who doesn't mind when I demand to go home because it's twenty to midnight and I haven't blipped and it starts you thinking: maybe we should get out of the city and find a nice place, maybe by the sea. Somewhere small.